The Best Novels to Curl Up with This Winter

From a fractured family in modern-day New York to a vengeful songbird in Second Empire Paris, the characters in this season’s best novels promise to deliver unforgettable adventures

The Lost Time AccidentsJohn Wray

A doomed love affair, a century-old secret and a protagonist who finds himself untethered from the laws of time (seriously) are at the heart of this new novel from Wray, the award-bedecked author of Lowboy. While the story touches on dynastic drama and the supernatural, what shines are the screwball adventures Wray sends hero Waldy Tolliver on during the course of nearly 500 delightful pages.

Tags:

The Best Novels to Curl Up with This Winter

From a fractured family in modern-day New York to a vengeful songbird in Second Empire Paris, the characters in this season’s best novels promise to deliver unforgettable adventures

Mr. SplitfootSamantha Hunt

Hunt’s enchanting third novel adeptly obscures the line between the earthly and the metaphysical. Decades after leaving her fundamentalist foster home, Ruth, now mute, encounters her pregnant niece, Cora. The two women embark on a twisted and otherworldly quest—intensified by Hunt’s lucid imagery—across New York state, where contemporary society is obscured in the wake of sublime characters and hair-raising happenings.

Tags:

The Best Novels to Curl Up with This Winter

From a fractured family in modern-day New York to a vengeful songbird in Second Empire Paris, the characters in this season’s best novels promise to deliver unforgettable adventures

The MareMary Gaitskill

Compelling and unexpectedly painful, Gaitskill’s first novel in a decade explores indecision over parenthood through Ginger and Paul, a couple in upstate New York, and 11-year-old Velveteen Vargas from Brooklyn, whom they meet through the Fresh Air Fund. The story is told convincingly through the alternating perspectives of unlike characters—people divided by age, class, gender and experience—but Velvet’s coming of age and relationship with a horse, Fugly Girl, underscore a poignant sense of unity.

Tags:

The Best Novels to Curl Up with This Winter

From a fractured family in modern-day New York to a vengeful songbird in Second Empire Paris, the characters in this season’s best novels promise to deliver unforgettable adventures

The Queen of the NightAlexander Chee

When Lilliet Berne, the toast of the Paris Opera, finally lands her dream role—one written especially for her—the elation is short-lived. In this sweeping, engrossing second novel from Chee, whose Edinburgh came out in 2002, the diva discovers her coveted part is based on the secret past she thought she’d hidden from the haut monde she’s made her life amongst.